Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. Today were leaders at
Speaker 1: the gateway to the mighty Amazon River. It's November eleventh,
Speaker 1: and the United Nations Climate Summit COP thirty has officially
Speaker 1: begun here in Brazil. It's happening in Berlen, a port
Speaker 1: city of about two million people at the mouth of
Speaker 1: the Amazon River. The negotiations started with a fight about
Speaker 1: what to put on the agenda, and that's not unexpected.
Speaker 1: It often happens at the start of a COP meeting,
Speaker 1: but it is certainly a rockier start than the Brazilian
Speaker 1: hosts of COP thirty would have wanted. Later on in
Speaker 1: today's episode, I'm speaking with an experienced climate diplomat, Rachel Kite,
Speaker 1: about the outcomes she's looking for here in Brazil and
Speaker 1: who will fill the void left behind by the US.
Speaker 1: But first, I want to give you a sense of
Speaker 1: what it's like to be at a climate summit near
Speaker 1: the Amazon Forest and our reactions to the world leader's
Speaker 1: speeches that took place last week opening the proceedings here
Speaker 1: in Brazil. To do that, I'm joined by my colleague
Speaker 1: Sarah Wells, who leads Bloomberg's coverage of climate and energy. Sarah,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks Egsha.
Speaker 1: So we got a chance to see a little bit
Speaker 1: of the Amazon forest. What was it like we did?
Speaker 2: It was great. I mean after a couple of days
Speaker 2: in the blue Zone at the World Leader's Summit, you
Speaker 2: could be literally any country in the world. You were
Speaker 2: in a windowless tent, and so to be outside in
Speaker 2: the forest learning new things about fruits and plants and
Speaker 2: how they grow, getting some time on a boat, getting
Speaker 2: to have a beer and look at our surroundings was fantastic.
Speaker 2: And did I guess speak to the controversial reason for
Speaker 2: putting the summit in Belem in the first place, which
Speaker 2: was to try to give the attendees some exposure to
Speaker 2: what's happening here.
Speaker 1: We saw a three hundred year old tree called the Sumahoma.
Speaker 1: We saw a boat filled with military police trying to
Speaker 1: take care of all the delegates who are coming here.
Speaker 1: And the reason for all that security is that we've
Speaker 1: had many world leaders show up here at copp and
Speaker 1: give speeches. It's typical at the start when they want
Speaker 1: to inspire the delegates to go and do something bold,
Speaker 1: But there weren't that many world leaders this time around.
Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, I had the King and Queen
Speaker 2: of Sweden on my plane coming here. But unfortunately, within
Speaker 2: the Blue Zone itself, the journalists were very segregated from
Speaker 2: the world leaders. It's literally a barricade going down the
Speaker 2: middle of the corridor, and so seeing a physical world
Speaker 2: leader in the flesh was not what we experienced. We
Speaker 2: sat an ow media room and watched them on TV.
Speaker 1: Regardless, I know that was not ideal. We would have
Speaker 1: wanted to really be in the room with the world leaders.
Speaker 1: But were there highlights from the speeches?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I enjoyed. Me and Motley, the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister of Barbados obviously you know she has has some
Speaker 2: credentials as a as a climate campaigner, but she came
Speaker 2: with a specific idea around methane, which was something new.
Speaker 3: I have come here however, this afternoon to speak on
Speaker 3: one s and that is methane. The scientists advise that
Speaker 3: this is the main way that we can not stall
Speaker 3: the increase in temperatures, but reverse the temperature increase that
Speaker 3: we have seen across the planet.
Speaker 2: For Bloomberg clients and listeners, Petro Sanchez floated the idea
Speaker 2: of a levy on business class flights and private jets
Speaker 2: class premium. Yet obviously that's of a concern to a
Speaker 2: relatively small proportion of the world, but certainly for some.
Speaker 2: And then we did have some quite remarks from some
Speaker 2: of the Latin American leaders about Trump. In particular, Columbia's
Speaker 2: Petro was the most direct.
Speaker 1: Elke Senor Donald Trump Novenga el dubta l personal dena
Speaker 1: Jevas Sosia that a laismo econeia allow maney that.
Speaker 2: You know he he said that Trump is against humanity
Speaker 2: and a bunch of other things. And so there were
Speaker 2: definitely some strong feelings expressed about the American position on
Speaker 2: climate at this point.
Speaker 1: And it's just the start of the negotiations. It's your
Speaker 1: first COP meeting. What has your experience been like.
Speaker 2: I think everyone said before I came that you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of the rest of the world recedes and
Speaker 2: suddenly you're in this bubble where you know, some some
Speaker 2: things make sense, some things really don't, And I think
Speaker 2: that's that's the case. You know, you suddenly find yourself
Speaker 2: sort of pouring over very technical discussion which can have
Speaker 2: real world consequences. So definitely, you know, being being in
Speaker 2: a media center with hundreds of other journalists, expensive food,
Speaker 2: very popular, occasional arrivals of coffee deliveries that you know,
Speaker 2: that stuff has been has been fun. But I think
Speaker 2: what we you know, what we are all here to
Speaker 2: write about, is significant pieces of news that will hopefully
Speaker 2: come out of this. And that's that's on all the attendees,
Speaker 2: but it's obviously most of all on our on our
Speaker 2: host country, Brazil.
Speaker 1: And what do you expect we might be writing about
Speaker 1: in two weeks time.
Speaker 2: Well As of now, the discussion is all around what
Speaker 2: ends up on the agenda. That's a very you know,
Speaker 2: temporary discussion. As I said earlier, I do think methane
Speaker 2: seems to have some momentum behind it, so let's see,
Speaker 2: let's see if we get anywhere on that. And then
Speaker 2: I think this discussion around whether there should be a
Speaker 2: potential roadmap to move away from fossil fuels. Obviously, the
Speaker 2: declaration to even attempt to move away from fossil fuels
Speaker 2: was highly contentious at previous cops and so I think
Speaker 2: the fact that Brazil is even looking to put that
Speaker 2: back on the agenda does suggest that they're prepared to,
Speaker 2: you know, to go into a region that will come
Speaker 2: with a fight, so we will be watching that really closely.
Speaker 2: And then lastly, I would say I think the influence
Speaker 2: probably not on the ground, but let's see the influence
Speaker 2: or otherwise of the US on proceedings is obviously a
Speaker 2: huge thing for us to watch.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sarah, thank you for having me join me
Speaker 1: after the break where I speak with Rachel Kite, the
Speaker 1: UK's Special Representative for Climate, about negotiations in an increasingly
Speaker 1: polarized world. To find all of Bloomberg's coverage of COP thirty,
Speaker 1: head to our website bloomberg dot com Forward Slash Green.
Speaker 1: You can also sign up to Bloomberg Green's newsletter that
Speaker 1: comes out daily during the COP meeting. Find it at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com Forward Slash Newsletters. There are a few
Speaker 1: people as well placed to understand how climate negotiations play
Speaker 1: out as Rachel Kite. She is the UK's Special Representative
Speaker 1: for Climate and she has held a number of significant
Speaker 1: positions across the climate space. She was the Special Representative
Speaker 1: of the United Nations Secretary General and the CEO of
Speaker 1: Sustainable Energy for All. She also served as World Bank
Speaker 1: Groups Vice President and Special Envy for Climate Change. In
Speaker 1: her current role. She has spent the last year up
Speaker 1: to COP thirty meeting diplomats and leaders from around the
Speaker 1: world trying to show up the support for action here
Speaker 1: in Berlin.
Speaker 4: Rachel, welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: It's lovely to see you. Actually, So you.
Speaker 4: Were appointed a UK Special Representative for Climate just over
Speaker 4: a year ago and your goal is wide ranging. You're
Speaker 4: supposed to support ministers that will help increase UK's diplomatic
Speaker 4: engagement on climate globally. What have you done so far.
Speaker 5: I've been out there in the world really pushing out
Speaker 5: the intention of this government when it came into office,
Speaker 5: which was that even though we're only one percent of
Speaker 5: global emissions, that's not a reason to disengage, which I
Speaker 5: think had sometimes been the case beforehand, but precisely because
Speaker 5: we're only one percent of global emissions, we need the
Speaker 5: other ninety nine percent to be going through the transition
Speaker 5: that we've started to go through ourselves, and at the
Speaker 5: same time this growing realization about how much we need
Speaker 5: to be dealing with adaptation and resilience. Now we've just
Speaker 5: seen the Climate Change Committee come out with a domestic
Speaker 5: report on how vulnerable we are as our own country.
Speaker 5: But what's been really interesting. So I've been in every continent.
Speaker 5: I've been talking to middle income countries about missions reduction
Speaker 5: and their energy transitions, and then talking to lower income
Speaker 5: countries about growth and prosperity and investment and trade that
Speaker 5: is green, and then to countries that are really vulnerable
Speaker 5: about how much more we can do to mainstream adaptation
Speaker 5: and resilience into their economic.
Speaker 1: Growth and planning.
Speaker 5: But when I'm out there, what countries want is the
Speaker 5: how to, especially on the energy transition. So countless numbers
Speaker 5: of countries that want technical assistance, support on power sector reform,
Speaker 5: on how to build an offshore wind industry, how to
Speaker 5: decommission call, how to make the transition that we've made
Speaker 5: over the last twenty odd years, and then how to
Speaker 5: partner with us, and how to get more UK investment
Speaker 5: into their green transitions, how to talk about the difficulties
Speaker 5: of hard to debate sectors, and how to get more
Speaker 5: of their investment into the UK economy. So yeah, special
Speaker 5: representative for Climate, but a big piece of this is
Speaker 5: about the trade and investment that makes those transitions really happen.
Speaker 4: And you get to do this because the UK has
Speaker 4: for the last seventeen years since the UK Climate Change
Speaker 4: Actor was passed a leader on climate issues, whether it
Speaker 4: was the Conservative Party which led the government for most
Speaker 4: of that time, or whether it's the Labor Party now,
Speaker 4: And in the process the UK has shown not just
Speaker 4: how to do a law, but also how to deploy
Speaker 4: large amounts of renewables, how to build the grid, and
Speaker 4: you get to take UK's learnings out to the world
Speaker 4: but also reflect back on the UK at a time
Speaker 4: when the politics are shifting. The Conservative Party that led
Speaker 4: on climate now wants to get rid of the Climate
Speaker 4: Change Act. Reform Party, which is gaining in polls at
Speaker 4: least and is ahead of Labor and Conservatives in many cases,
Speaker 4: is saying they want to get rid of net zero goal.
Speaker 4: Even though this Labor government, the one that you represent,
Speaker 4: isn't turning back on climate How hard does that make
Speaker 4: your life when you go abroad to take the message
Speaker 4: of what needs to be done on climate change.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: I think that across the world many countries are experiencing
Speaker 5: a pushback from populace on the right mainly but also
Speaker 5: in the past on the left around the drive nets.
Speaker 5: If people can't feel or imagine what a clean energy
Speaker 5: future looks like to them, and feels like in their pocket.
Speaker 5: Then they are vulnerable to the sort of miscommunication, disinformation
Speaker 5: or whatever you often see now. So actually it's a
Speaker 5: point of conversation, right. So people see that we had
Speaker 5: a bipartisan support, right as Americans would say, around our goals,
Speaker 5: and you know, and of course a lot of the
Speaker 5: indications are that the public still wants clean air, wants
Speaker 5: clean water, wants safe communities, wants protection from extreme heat,
Speaker 5: wants floods planning. But what they don't like is energy
Speaker 5: bills that are expensive, and there's very real reasons for that.
Speaker 5: And also with all humility, I mean, you know, nobody's
Speaker 5: got this all the way right, right, So, as a
Speaker 5: country that is going through a moment of political tension
Speaker 5: around the speed with which this transition is happening, the
Speaker 5: government came in and started fixing pieces of the regulatory system,
Speaker 5: putting in place bits and pieces that would allow us
Speaker 5: to go faster to meet the goal of twenty thirty
Speaker 5: that was set by the government when it was running
Speaker 5: for office. All of that is happening, but you don't
Speaker 5: necessarily see the result immediately. So then what's the challenge
Speaker 5: of communication internationally? People see us in a leadership position.
Speaker 5: See that this is a difficult issue domestically, but for
Speaker 5: many other countries it's a difficult issue domestically, and so
Speaker 5: that's a point of commonality.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 4: So you're saying, so far the UK's leadership on climate,
Speaker 4: whether that was through making laws or through energy, is
Speaker 4: one that other countries wanted to copy. But now they're
Speaker 4: also looking at the UK and the crumbling political consensus
Speaker 4: and they are seeing whether there are lessons they can
Speaker 4: learn from it. Because these things are not isolated. They're
Speaker 4: not just happening in the UK. They're happening in other places. No.
Speaker 5: I mean, look across the EU, look across Socania, look
Speaker 5: across Latin America. You know, these are issues that are
Speaker 5: present in any democracy, right. And what's interesting is a
Speaker 5: number of countries now have got governments, you know, with
Speaker 5: commitments to you know, phasing out of coal by twenty
Speaker 5: forty or really ambitious goals around the energy transition. And
Speaker 5: you know, it's not just the political narrative which has
Speaker 5: become more pungent, right, it is also that global growth
Speaker 5: has slowed or is not rampant. Right, So, for fear
Speaker 5: of a populist uprising, right, a number of countries are like, Okay,
Speaker 5: how do I transition away from coal on the timeline
Speaker 5: that I've set, Where is the investment going to come from?
Speaker 5: How do I navigate tensions around tariff's what is that
Speaker 5: doing to the level of growth? How do I secure
Speaker 5: a just transition for the people employed in the sector.
Speaker 5: So these are universally difficult and universally important themes that
Speaker 5: countries want to work on together. And so when I'm
Speaker 5: traveling that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: Are there specific country examples where over the past year
Speaker 4: you have seen that play out and work in favor
Speaker 4: of climate action.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So the Philippines has got extremely ambitious goals around phase
Speaker 5: seeing out coal and bringing in offshore wind and diversifying
Speaker 5: and bringing more investment into solar, not just in the
Speaker 5: sort of metromillar area, but across the country. So Korea
Speaker 5: new government in place inherits it and was very bullish
Speaker 5: on the campaign trail around their ambitions how do they
Speaker 5: do it? They're about to invest in an offshore wind
Speaker 5: industry as well. Vietnam, which is a country that we've
Speaker 5: worked through the Just Energy Transition Partnership for a number
Speaker 5: of years, but that's starting to move along the AZI
Speaker 5: and power grid. How do you build a power grid
Speaker 5: that allows each of the Asian countries to grow their
Speaker 5: economies by accessing the clean energy that each of them possess.
Speaker 5: Right Eastern Caribbean, how do each of those countries build
Speaker 5: out their geothermal You know, it's probably cheaper and easier
Speaker 5: to do it as an integrated grid, but that's really complicated.
Speaker 5: How do they think about that? Australia India huge move
Speaker 5: to develop offshore wind off the good coast goods you're
Speaker 5: out off Tamil Nadu. You know how to do that.
Speaker 5: We have a really built out technical cooperation with them anyway,
Speaker 5: and now we're investing in each other. And then China.
Speaker 5: I've just come back from China where we have a
Speaker 5: technical cooperation on power sector reform and also now on
Speaker 5: battery storage and hydrogen.
Speaker 4: So in your time covering climate, you've covered it from
Speaker 4: many different angles. You've worked in the private sector, You've
Speaker 4: tried to push carbon markets, You've worked at the cop level,
Speaker 4: looking at diplomacy and how negotiations work. We are in
Speaker 4: the tenth year of the Paris Agreement. Could have been
Speaker 4: this year when we celebrate what Paris has achieved. But
Speaker 4: with the US the largest emitter, leaving the Paris Agreement,
Speaker 4: how would you class the progress that the world has
Speaker 4: made so far.
Speaker 5: It's definitely made progress. I mean, over the next few days,
Speaker 5: you know, the narrative will be, oh, we're not on track. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we're not on track. We're more on track than we
Speaker 5: would have been without the Paris Agreement, and the plan
Speaker 5: that countries are now submitting are fully politically contested at home,
Speaker 5: you know, hard fought economic plans, which is what we
Speaker 5: really wanted ten years ago. But we're now just beginning
Speaker 5: to see in the third generation that this is what
Speaker 5: they are. And we wouldn't be there without the Paris Agreement.
Speaker 5: I don't think countries would be lining up to go
Speaker 5: through the pain of developing these reports if we hadn't.
Speaker 5: But the point is that we're not going fast enough
Speaker 5: and we're not going far enough, and so the Paris
Speaker 5: Agreement is vulnerable to attack from popular so or from
Speaker 5: the polls on the right and on the left, because
Speaker 5: it isn't meeting needs sufficiently well. And so when we
Speaker 5: gather in Brazil, the leaders that gather and those who
Speaker 5: aren't there but by proxy need to sort of say, okay,
Speaker 5: we're not yet on track, but we commit to doing more.
Speaker 5: Transitions don't go smoothly, they don't go in a straight line.
Speaker 5: They can go very fast and then slow down and
Speaker 5: very fast, and it's a series of s curves. It's
Speaker 5: a series of leaps forward, and there's no reason why
Speaker 5: we can't commit to doing that. But the fact that
Speaker 5: we're multilaterally all sort of working together to make this
Speaker 5: go faster, that's the conversation. It's not a conversation about
Speaker 5: going slower. Is important.
Speaker 4: Are we working together though, because recently we saw a
Speaker 4: very clear sign of how things don't work together at
Speaker 4: multilateral forums. The International Maritime Organization had a vote to
Speaker 4: put in a global carbon tax for shipping, a sector
Speaker 4: that produces one billion tons of emissions, and until about
Speaker 4: the day of the vote, there was good feeling among
Speaker 4: countries that they'd argued over politically contested plan and had
Speaker 4: come to something that they could agree on. And then
Speaker 4: one country, the US, with its ability to call diplomats
Speaker 4: and make threats, which we've reported on, caused them to
Speaker 4: delay the vote, and now some say that it may
Speaker 4: never come to pass. So are we working together.
Speaker 5: This majority of countries are working together. For sure. I
Speaker 5: think what happened at the IMO was extraordinarily disappointing, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, that's a decade's effort at best delayed, at
Speaker 5: worst put on the shelf. And so we'll have to
Speaker 5: come back at it another way and find a way
Speaker 5: to do this, because that the polluter has to pay
Speaker 5: is a kind of fundamental principle of all of this.
Speaker 5: And yeah, the United States made clear its position over
Speaker 5: the summer and then intensified its diplomacy in the days
Speaker 5: up to the vote. But it also creates space for
Speaker 5: plausible deniability for other countries that, for whatever reasons, didn't
Speaker 5: like this or didn't like that. So in any multilateral negotiation,
Speaker 5: there may be one protagonist which attracts most of the attention,
Speaker 5: but it normally creates new spaces which can be exploited
Speaker 5: one way or the other. But when it comes to blame,
Speaker 5: I think obviously the United States has said that it
Speaker 5: filed its intention to withdraw. That comes due after cop
Speaker 5: right but at the end of the year beginning of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six. So for the moment, the United States
Speaker 5: is in, but it has made clear its intention to leave,
Speaker 5: which puts it in a minority, even if it is
Speaker 5: a large economy and nobody else is leaving it. And
Speaker 5: so I think it is clear that everybody's working together,
Speaker 5: and I think it's clear that when we gather on
Speaker 5: the port city in the middle of the Amazon, that
Speaker 5: what leaders will be saying is that this is a
Speaker 5: multilateral process which is a value and will be defended,
Speaker 5: and we will defend the multilateral processes that help us
Speaker 5: work together on these problems which go beyond all boundaries.
Speaker 4: If you take this ten years on Paris, A lot
Speaker 4: of it at COP meetings, and I've been to five
Speaker 4: of them, so not as many as you, but I
Speaker 4: can say it's so technical and so in depth necessary,
Speaker 4: but one that doesn't break through for a politician to
Speaker 4: go back home and make a case for why we
Speaker 4: are doing climate action. How do you take what has
Speaker 4: been achieved and make that case in a political away
Speaker 4: to people so that the next ten years leaders can
Speaker 4: continue to support this multilateral forum.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great question. So for the last ten years.
Speaker 5: So first of all, we agreed Paris, then everybody sort
Speaker 5: of went home, and then the negotiators sort of negotiated
Speaker 5: a rule book on how we would implement what we'd agreed,
Speaker 5: and that took way too long, But that's done now
Speaker 5: and you could actually say that we've negotiated everything that
Speaker 5: needs to be negotiated, and so what this cop represents
Speaker 5: is a significant pivot to accelerating implementation. So it's all
Speaker 5: about implementing all of the things that we've agreed. That's
Speaker 5: what the Brazilians are trying to organize, like outside of
Speaker 5: the negotiations, and I think that that's actually much easier
Speaker 5: for politicians to sell at home. So why would we
Speaker 5: go to Brazil and discuss investing in the Amazon and
Speaker 5: other tropical forests right? Well, first, because if we lose them,
Speaker 5: we lose control over the thermostatu of the planet. Right
Speaker 5: we will pass a tipping point which will bring much
Speaker 5: more climate impact to everybody. But you know, to look
Speaker 5: at it from a British perspective, if we lose the
Speaker 5: tropical forests and their integrity, our own food security is
Speaker 5: going to be massively disrupted. So the idea that our
Speaker 5: domestic security is secure if we haven't got you know,
Speaker 5: a climate regime which is starting to see real progress,
Speaker 5: is you know, at the very heart of why I existed,
Speaker 5: my rule and my twin Ruth Davis, who's the special
Speaker 5: representative of nature, why she exists. You know, we're there
Speaker 5: because our foreign policy has to have climate and nature
Speaker 5: at the heart of it, because we need those relationships
Speaker 5: in order to be secure ourselves. So that's the reason
Speaker 5: to go, right, We're not going to be safe and
Speaker 5: we're not going to be secure. We're not going to
Speaker 5: prosper if we lose the tropical rainforests. It's as simple
Speaker 5: as that. So I think that as we get into
Speaker 5: implementation and accelerating implementation, it's actually easier to explain to
Speaker 5: the world's public why we're there.
Speaker 4: You've got many examples that you could use to say, sure,
Speaker 4: this should land right. The price of coffee has gone
Speaker 4: up because there's been persistent drought in Brazil, which produces
Speaker 4: forty percent of the world's coffee. The price of electricity
Speaker 4: is high because we've had very high gas prices because
Speaker 4: of the Russian attack on Ukraine, which have been brought
Speaker 4: down because of renewables. There are real world clear examples,
Speaker 4: but they're not cutting through to people. What's missing.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: I think that we haven't in many cases taken the
Speaker 5: time and the effort to convey those stories in ways
Speaker 5: that people can hear. I mean, I think, you know,
Speaker 5: there's a danger in seeding the marketplace, the public marketplace,
Speaker 5: to the scare mongering and the misinformation from the far
Speaker 5: right and the far left. So I think that we
Speaker 5: have a responsibility to tell these stories in the way
Speaker 5: that people can understand. And I think in particular around
Speaker 5: the issues around nature, I think people are inclined to
Speaker 5: understand that without nature, it's going to be very difficult
Speaker 5: to produce food, to have stable watersheds, to be able
Speaker 5: to balance the planet's own needs with hours, and that
Speaker 5: we're not going to be resilient without nature. I mean,
Speaker 5: I think there's a sensibility in people in countries around
Speaker 5: the world that that makes sense to them.
Speaker 4: And so if the next ten years of COP are
Speaker 4: about implementing all the goals and the rules that have
Speaker 4: been put in place, this cop and what it produces
Speaker 4: will be a test case for what next cops are
Speaker 4: going to look like. What do you expect this coup
Speaker 4: will achieve?
Speaker 5: Well, so I think we'll go back to the theory
Speaker 5: of change, right, theory of changes that we have an
Speaker 5: energy transition that moves us towards clean energy, that that
Speaker 5: clean energy allows us to electrify services to people and
Speaker 5: to the economy, which means that they can engage with
Speaker 5: them benefit from all of the installed renewable energy. I
Speaker 5: think of electrification transforms people's lives, right. And then at
Speaker 5: the same time, we stop deforesting in particular tropical forests,
Speaker 5: and then we have to protect land usee et cetera.
Speaker 5: And then there's bits about the oceans or whatever. But
Speaker 5: at the very center of that, then I think what
Speaker 5: I would expect from this COP is that first of all,
Speaker 5: we have a COP where the rest of the world
Speaker 5: says we're going to continue working on this. You know,
Speaker 5: if you want to leave, leave, but we're going to
Speaker 5: keep going. Then I would expect to see announcements around
Speaker 5: funding tropical forests. I'd expect to see investing in them
Speaker 5: rather not funding them. I would expect to see statements
Speaker 5: around the growth of carbon markets, both what I would
Speaker 5: call compliance markets, so trading systems and taxes, but also
Speaker 5: I would expect to see, you know, statements around governments
Speaker 5: leaning in to stimulate demand from the corporate sector for
Speaker 5: voluntary markets as well. I think you'll see some agreements
Speaker 5: between countries as well using Article six, So a big
Speaker 5: thing about revenue into nature. I think you'll see the also,
Speaker 5: then statements around methane. Methane or methane is the handbrake
Speaker 5: that we can apply to global warming, because if we
Speaker 5: can deliver on all the pledges and the statements that
Speaker 5: have been made, that's half a degree of warming in
Speaker 5: a very short period of time. I think you'll see
Speaker 5: then a big discussion, a big discussion, and hopefully a
Speaker 5: positive resolution around adaptation finance. This has always played the
Speaker 5: step sister to funding mitigation, but every country in the
Speaker 5: world is experiencing really quite extreme impacts, and so how
Speaker 5: we pay for that, And that means that we have
Speaker 5: to take the adaptation finance discussion away from just the
Speaker 5: cops and the sort of highly sort of stylized debate
Speaker 5: that we have there. Not to say that we walk
Speaker 5: away from our commitments, We're good for that, but we
Speaker 5: have to start having a conversation about how we help
Speaker 5: people be resilient, which is about safety nets and social security,
Speaker 5: and how do you fund your health service and education service,
Speaker 5: how do you help nature are resilience, which means funding nature,
Speaker 5: And then how we help infrastructure be resilient. So you know,
Speaker 5: what is the cost of infrastructure which is resilient to
Speaker 5: the kinds of impacts that we see already, and who's
Speaker 5: paying for that? And could we reward companies for investing
Speaker 5: in making sure that that infrastructure is resilient rather than
Speaker 5: sort of charging it as a cost. So there's all
Speaker 5: kinds of issues which we never get to talk about
Speaker 5: in the negotiation because it's sort of you know, rich
Speaker 5: world versus poor world, you know, North versus South. But
Speaker 5: I hope that we would actually come out with a
Speaker 5: way forward on adaptation finance.
Speaker 4: The dynamics in previous cops have been, as you point out,
Speaker 4: rich versus poor because there is a historical reason for it.
Speaker 4: The rich countries absolutely emit more and are responsible for
Speaker 4: most of climate change as it's occurred, and poor countries
Speaker 4: still have room to emit carbon but also have a
Speaker 4: deep need for economic growth. In this COP, where the
Speaker 4: US is not yet left but is leaving, the dynamics
Speaker 4: will be much harder because it's not just about rich
Speaker 4: versus poor. It's also about a rich country abandoning its
Speaker 4: goal to act and other rich countries not yet standing
Speaker 4: up and saying we can fill that gap.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't think anybody can fill the US's gap,
Speaker 5: but I think that we and other countries within the
Speaker 5: EU and other developed countries, if that's a word that
Speaker 5: still we can use. We'll be leaning in and saying
Speaker 5: this is how we can use the international architecture, this
Speaker 5: is how we can use our own resources. And then
Speaker 5: you've got a set of voluntary contributors right under the
Speaker 5: Convention and under the Paris Agreement who are now really
Speaker 5: leaning in and doing an extraordinary amount. So that's the
Speaker 5: China's and the Saudi Arabias and the Indias of this world.
Speaker 5: And then you've got sort of all of the multilateral processes.
Speaker 5: And then you've got this leadership call from Mia Motley
Speaker 5: in the Bridgetown Initiative, but you know, joined by most
Speaker 5: other countries, which is to flip a switch or to
Speaker 5: redesign the international architecture around the lack of fairness in
Speaker 5: the way that the architecture works at the moment. So
Speaker 5: you know, when you've got more cash leaving the Caribbean
Speaker 5: than arriving into the Caribbean, then how on earth do
Speaker 5: you build the fiscal space and the resilience for them
Speaker 5: to be able to withstand I mean, I mean, I'm
Speaker 5: talking to you today with Hurricane Melissa bearing down on Jamaica.
Speaker 5: So you know, the US can absent itself from the
Speaker 5: Paris Agreement. But look at the leadership from Singapore, look
Speaker 5: at the leadership from China, from Saudi Arabia, from US,
Speaker 5: from Germany. This is where it's growing. And I was
Speaker 5: just at the Africa Climate Summit just a few weeks
Speaker 5: ago in Alice Aberba, and you know, there weren't a
Speaker 5: lot of Western journalists then there weren't a lot of
Speaker 5: Western business leaders there either. But the message from African
Speaker 5: leaders was like, this is our moment. Help us meet
Speaker 5: our moment. This is good investment. You will be rewarded. Well,
Speaker 5: don't misperceive the risk of investing in our infrastructure. Oh
Speaker 5: and by the way, adaptation is job rich. And you
Speaker 5: know we've got lots of young people. So I'm not Pollyanna,
Speaker 5: and I don't want to underestimate the impact of the
Speaker 5: US's withdrawal. US finance, US business, Global finance, Global business
Speaker 5: is dealing with the reality of what climate is doing
Speaker 5: to our economy and that changes the opportunities as well
Speaker 5: as produces more risks, right, So climate change has changed
Speaker 5: our economic geography. That is reflected then in opportunity seeking
Speaker 5: and risk management by the financial sector.
Speaker 4: If the COP meeting plays out like the IMO did,
Speaker 4: and we have seen failures at COP before the two
Speaker 4: and nine Copenhagen Summit led to a lot of reflection
Speaker 4: and took a good time before multilateralism could work and
Speaker 4: have a Paris Agreement agreed on twenty fifteen, six years later.
Speaker 4: If we see a failure like that at COP thirty,
Speaker 4: how should the world react?
Speaker 5: So I think that our Brazilian hosts and countries that
Speaker 5: are prepared to lead and have led by the quality
Speaker 5: of their NDCs, are very alive to the risk of
Speaker 5: a collapsed CARP or a COP that struggles to come
Speaker 5: to an agreement. But that was then and this is
Speaker 5: now in that this is about implementing what we've already agreed,
Speaker 5: and so in some respects it is a different COP
Speaker 5: And I think the real issue is how to communicate
Speaker 5: that to the global public. You know, how to communicate that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: there was a point in gathering and we didn't all
Speaker 5: need to get together because we do need to go
Speaker 5: further than what we promised to do. And by the way,
Speaker 5: there's all of this amazing stuff already happening. So you know,
Speaker 5: in a moment of transition, whether you follow Gramchy or others, right,
Speaker 5: that's good going on. There's lots of bad going on.
Speaker 5: There's incoherence, but those two truths are living simultaneously, and
Speaker 5: we've got to make sure that we actually deliver. But
Speaker 5: I don't believe that one country can collapse this process.
Speaker 5: First of all, I think that the IMO was a
Speaker 5: salutary lesson to everybody. And secondly, I think the vested
Speaker 5: interests of the majority of the world's population are in
Speaker 5: finding a way to move through this transition in an affordable,
Speaker 5: reliable way. There is no doubt that the science is
Speaker 5: clear and that at some point people expect their leaders
Speaker 5: to protect them.
Speaker 4: So you've just come back from China. Now, as much
Speaker 4: as we talk about the rich poor divide at COPS,
Speaker 4: there's also the US versus China dynamics that play out
Speaker 4: at COP. In this case, the US is leaving and
Speaker 4: China is stepping up. They are going to put out
Speaker 4: an NDC. We understand they have a goal to reach
Speaker 4: that zero by twenty sixty. They have become an exported
Speaker 4: giant on clean tech. How significant do you think China's
Speaker 4: leadership will be for this.
Speaker 5: Cop Yeah, so as the largest elector state, they play
Speaker 5: an outsized role in terms of their influence on the
Speaker 5: global economy and of the opportunity of clean energy and electrification.
Speaker 5: And then politically they are emerging. So by that I
Speaker 5: mean that they are bilaterally very strong when they want
Speaker 5: to be, but they are emerging as a master of multinaturalism.
Speaker 5: They are completely committed to the multnatural process. They have
Speaker 5: been very vocal all the way through twenty twenty five
Speaker 5: about their commitment to the Paris Agreement. They spoke out
Speaker 5: strongly at the recent annual meetings of the IMF and
Speaker 5: the World Bank, so that commitment is clear. But they
Speaker 5: are just emerging as into a space where the world
Speaker 5: expects them to sort of lead on the multilateral stage.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously they've been members of the G twenty
Speaker 5: for a number of years since the beginning. But it's
Speaker 5: one thing to lead by lad it's another to lead multinaturally.
Speaker 5: And I think that they're feeling their way a little bit.
Speaker 5: So yes, they are clearly a very important and you know,
Speaker 5: significant power how they play their cards, I think is
Speaker 5: something that remains to be seen, but they will come,
Speaker 5: you know, fully committed and that I think they're bringing
Speaker 5: a large delegation of business leaders and other leaders as
Speaker 5: well as the negotiators that we all know so well.
Speaker 5: So yeah, committed multilateralists emerging as multilateral leaders.
Speaker 4: So Brazil, as home to the Amazon, is working towards
Speaker 4: getting this Tropical Forest Forever Facility funded, and that would
Speaker 4: be a way to get countries with these forests a
Speaker 4: revenue stream to protect those forests. But a lot of
Speaker 4: the deforestation, not just in the Amazon, but around the
Speaker 4: world happens because people have needs for food and for fuel.
Speaker 4: They'll either cut it to cook the food, or they'll
Speaker 4: cut it so that they can grow food on those lands.
Speaker 4: What is the way to actually start to reduce emissions
Speaker 4: from this land news sector that is so varied and
Speaker 4: so important to people.
Speaker 5: One of the reasons why I think Brazil's got credibility
Speaker 5: in trying to build this fund, and of course it's
Speaker 5: only one part of the Amazon stewardship, is that it
Speaker 5: has shown that you can change the rate of deforestation
Speaker 5: very quickly. Right if you look at Lula's first term,
Speaker 5: and also look at what he's done in his second term.
Speaker 5: He has reversed accelerating rates of deforestation very quickly. And
Speaker 5: so for both the sort of Indonesia and the broader
Speaker 5: Southeast Asian basin, for the Congo basin and for the Amazon,
Speaker 5: the politics are different, the array of countries that steward
Speaker 5: the forests are different. But if you can get at
Speaker 5: scale payments, I mean fundamentally, it's payments for ecosystem services.
Speaker 5: You get payments into countries and then to the people
Speaker 5: most directly affected. So they're in this TFFF Future Forest
Speaker 5: Fund or facility. If it goes forward, twenty percent of
Speaker 5: the revenues will go directly to indigenous peoples and to
Speaker 5: local communities in countries that qualify i e. They committed
Speaker 5: to integrity in the way in which they manage their forests.
Speaker 5: Then that helps. But I think what the Brazilians are
Speaker 5: trying to do is actually build a scaled fund, right,
Speaker 5: so not you know, handouts of aid money or whatever
Speaker 5: in small amounts to small communities, but actually you know
Speaker 5: a significant revenue stream of hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 5: and growing every year for the payment of those services
Speaker 5: from the forest that are standing. So in some ways
Speaker 5: it's not new, but the structure and the scale of
Speaker 5: ambition and who would participate is new.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Rachel, thank you, thank you for listening to Zero.
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Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Oscar Boyd with additional help
Speaker 1: from Anna Mazarakis. Our theme music is composed by Wonderly
Speaker 1: Special Thanks to Samarsadi Moses Andam Laura Milan and Sharan
Speaker 1: chan i'm Akshadrati Baksu